The debate about American grand strategy has long been shaped by familiar schools of thought: restraint, liberal internationalism, and primacy. But the intellectual movement that provided the ideological fuel for U.S. President Donald Trump’s rise to power, the New Right, is forging a new contender: call it “civilizationism.” References to Western civilization permeate strategy documents and speeches by key members of the administration. Vice President JD Vance set the tone in his February 2025 speech at the Munich Security Conference, stressing the “threat from within” to the fundamental values that characterize “our shared civilization.” The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy warned of “civilizational erasure.” This January, at Davos, Trump emphasized “the bonds we share with Europe as a civilization”; the next month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on the United States’ transatlantic partners to “renew the greatest civilization in human history.”

The notion that there is a Western civilization and that it is superior is, of course, not new. But the concept of the West espoused by the New Right—and how that concept ought to guide U.S. grand strategy—is fundamentally different from how most had previously understood it. It is not based on a creedal understanding of Western identity as rooted in a shared set of principles that anyone, regardless of origin, can espouse, such as constitutional democracy, liberty, and equality. Instead, for thinkers on the New Right, the West is defined by a specific geographic territory, a shared ancestry, and Christianity.

Extended to the realm of foreign policy, this reimagination of the foundations of Western civilization demands a new and distinct grand strategy. Civilizationism is still a work in progress. Writings on foreign policy by New Right thinkers are limited, and the camp is internally divided. But by examining those texts and following the movement’s domestic ideas to their logical conclusion, it is possible to discern a distinct worldview. Civilizationists would aim to structure the world along bounded civilizational spaces, each dominated by a hegemon. They believe the United States is rightfully the hegemon of the West, dedicated to defending the civilization’s borders, urging Europe to uphold purported Western values, and pursuing coexistence with other civilizations, such as the Chinese, rather than aspiring to global leadership. They reject the universal ambitions of primacy and the constraints imposed on U.S. sovereignty by liberal internationalism. Civilizationism also differs from restraint, requiring dominance over the Western Hemisphere, by military intervention if necessary. And unlike realist visions that justify a great power’s control over its backyard by pointing to its legitimate security interests, civilizationism offers an ideological justification for spheres of influence and their boundaries.

Despite the Trump administration’s embrace of civilizational rhetoric, in practice its foreign policy diverges from what civilizationism would advocate and many of Trump’s own backers hoped he would pursue. Even if Republicans win the White House again in 2028, that would not mean civilizationism will become U.S. grand strategy; the New Right would also have to prevail over the party’s establishment faction. But at least two factors seem to favor the New Right in the intraparty battle. One is demographic: most polling shows a generational divide among Republicans, with younger voters more supportive of positions such as scaling back the U.S. role in the Middle East and retreating from viewing China as a major threat. The other is Trump’s war on Iran. As the consequences of this strategically catastrophic campaign become ever more apparent, the New Right’s clout is set to grow, having opposed the war from the start.

For decades, Washington’s foreign policy establishment advocated for different varieties of liberal hegemony. Even during Trump’s first term, traditional........

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